State of the Union

I have been doing this blog for a year now. I didn't know what I could or would do with this space when I started, but it turned into a way to instantly publish the writing I do in my free time. I don't really know if I will keep it up. When I started I had the idea of posting at least one piece a week. That schedule, although it seems light, has been difficult lately for me to keep up with. My writing schedule is non-existent these days. We'll see if I shut it down for good, but I am definitely going to take a break for a while.

An Open Letter to J Mascis

I wish I could say it was me and not you, or it was you and not me, but it is both of us J. This is not the ‘90s anymore, god those were times weren’t they. Those were times.

I remember vividly riding my skateboard around Denver with a tape of Green Mind playing through my headphones. And I remember driving around my old hometown of Virginia Beach greeting all the ghosts, which drove me away originally, with Sludgefeast as my soundtrack.

I’m waiting… Please come back

I remember Europe with freak scene on every mixtape I made. And when my heart was broken I wrote and re-wrote in my notebook your words to Thumb.

There never really is a good time

There’s always nothin’ much to say

I’m pretty good, not doing bad

If I’m getting’ up most everyday

I bought fossils three times because I kept wearing out the tape. I am sorry that my ex-girlfriend destroyed the Little Fury Things vinyl I owned. Believe me, I am just as upset about that as anybody.

Then there was the last time J; The Boathouse, Norfolk, VA. We had made it through the early nineties intact. It seems. Do you remember Mike smoking a whole pack of cigarettes on stage? Crazy. Remember your eight-minute guitar solo on Start Choppin’? You were, and are, the only person with whom I would sit through an eight-minute guitar solo without rolling my eyes J.

Those were our days J. We owned them. That was ten years ago now. I still love you. I still have that issue of Spin with you on the cover. I still pull it out and read it. I still make castles out of my mashed potatoes. However; I’ve given up the plastic dinosaurs.

Look, my point is that it is now 2005. I bet your upcoming concert is going to rock. I would get all sweaty and passionate, that is, if I were going to be there. Like I have said, I still love you, but I love you in 1995. I don’t want to see you go through the motions pretending to still feel that nineties angst, but really just cashing in.

No, no, no…. Look.

Don’t get upset.

Look, I didn’t even mention how you are playing at the Clear Channel bat-cave, The Quest.

If you were still involved, if you still cared, you’d be touching the kids from the stage of the Triple Rock or First Ave, but hey, I’m not blaming you. You’re not getting any younger. You have bills to pay. All I am saying is I’ll be home thinking of you, but I can’t be with you anymore J.

Here is where our paths split. Keep you chin up, we’ll always have The Boathouse and we’ll always have Keep The Glove.

The song of Carolann

Carolann’s roots are showing. Her bottle blond is three weeks old. She presently has her hair in a ponytail that tickles the base of her neck when she tilts her head back to empty a bit more of the Boone’s Farm strawberry wine down her raw throat. It is three in the afternoon on a Tuesday and she is in her black Mazda Protégé 5, which is parked on 42^nd Ave. North where it intersects the parkway.

She parked here this morning waiting for a man. She is playing amateur detective. Joe Lee left her house in the waning moments of a 72-hour marathon of fucking, drinking, smoking, and snorting.

Carolann had been spurned; disrespected as woman the way she saw it. Carolann is not a woman who takes insult easily.

She knew Joe Lee passed this way often and she hoped to find out what he does during the day. She hoped to find demons to hold above him. She hoped to prove she is, in fact, better than him, despite what he shouted towards her on a hazy weekend morning.

The dark circles under her gray eyes have been permanent badges since the first night she snorted crystal meth. She went to drug counseling once, a year into her addiction. She heard herself say, “The first time is so fucking good, it is orgasmic. I felt myself wet all over. Every time I’ve done meth since I’ve been trying to reach that height again.”

This was a lucidity and deepness of thought she reached then, but never before and not since.

The late afternoon sun beared down and her skin cooked; ashen, wrinkled, and used. Her twenty-five year old body looked like a forty-five year old trailer park grandmother’s.

Space

There was a night full of stars and consequences. The Hale-Bopp comet shone faintly above our heads as we wrestled each other out of our clothes. The grass was damp and we lay naked looking at the comet. Speaking nothing between us, we were afraid of the promises we couldn’t make. We made an unspoken promise to not make promises.

My Karl Mueller Story

Amsterdam before noon always reminds of the feeling you have when you wake up and find your house trashed and people sleeping on your couch the night after a great party. There is gray haze that lifts around noon, when people start to think about doing whatever it is they do, again. I am sure there are people in Amsterdam who go to work in the morning and go home to their families at night. I’ve never seen those Dutch people; then again, I don’t go looking for them.

Riding the train in from Amersfoort with my friend Ryan and his sister Andrea my stomach is spinning and contorting inside my torso. I try to point my green nauseous head towards the empty seats in front of me and just focus on a single spot and wait out the ride.

We walk from the train station towards where we think the Bulldog is. Ryan and I desperately need something to fill our legs with blood again. We buy a couple tall cans of beer from a small, dirty store and find some chairs set out in front of a café that has not opened yet. It is 10:30 in the morning and the three of us discuss what to do for the day. Ryan and I are nursing our morning beer and Andy is looking at us with bewilderment.

A giant is walking down the street towards where we are sitting. He is over six feet tall and at least 250 pounds. He has wild unkempt hair like licking flames of the sun trying to escape his skull. He has a beard and wears dirty, grungy clothes: this is 1994. He is obviously American and he walks with determination holding a stack of green postcard size paper. As he walks by the table where we sit he lays one sheet of the green paper down. We all watch him walk away and then our eyes float toward the green piece of paper. We, in unison, look at the paper, look at each other, and then back at the paper.

“Does that say what I think it does?” I ask.

“Yeah. Holy Shit!” Ryan exclaims.

Printed on the paper was a picture of four scruffy Minnesota grunge guys and in print it said: SOUL ASYLUM / The Paradiso / Amsterdam.

Ten hours later the three of us are drinking warm German beer and smoking cigarettes inside a beautiful converted church with stain glass windows and elaborate, articulate woodwork. We stand stage right directly in front of where the bass player is set up.

The band walks out and fills the church with feedback and the crowd goes silent, attentive, and ready to erupt. Just when the feedback reaches such intensity that you swear you can actually hear your heart vibrating sympathetic tones: the band falls into Somebody to Shove.

This is the first of many times I would see Soul Asylum perform. They rock for two hours and the Dutch kids are flying all over the place. This is the politest moshing and stage-diving I have ever seen. After the final encore, there is a scramble for anything left on the stage such as set lists and picks and drumsticks. Failing to procure any of that stuff, Ryan finds Karl Mueller’s can of Heineken, still one-third full. The three of us finish it off and Ryan carries it with him on the train back to Amersfoort.

He proudly displayed that can in his dorm room until the day we left Europe. There were many nights listening to Put the Bone In on repeat and singing along, drunkenly, merrily.

The music scene of Minneapolis was one of the reasons I moved to Minneapolis three years later. I can’t make any grand conclusions about Karl’s life. I can’t make any knowledgeable statements about what Karl Mueller meant to the scene. However, I can say that Soul Asylum is legendary in this town and when I think of Soul Asylum, I think of that empty green Heineken can carried from continent to continent and from coast to coast. I remember my first weekend in Minnesota, standing for hours in the cold outside the 400 bar, waiting to see them play. I remember the Thanksgiving eve shows and walking home to Loring Park drunk as hell and being hung-over as I tried to keep the turkey and stuffing down the next day. These are tremendous memories for me. Thank you Soul Asylum for being there, and thanks for the beer Karl.

His Barstool of Choice (revisited)

Larry had been frequenting his pub of choice, The Shamrock, since he moved to Fridley last summer. It was the kind of establishment where mullets, white tennis shoes, and denim were accepted and encouraged. The first time he walked into the bar, Motorhead was blasting from the jukebox. Larry knew he had found a home.

He started coming twice a week, then three or four times a week, and eventually he was there every night. Larry always sat in the same place: at the near end of the rectangular bar, at the first barstool by the wall directly in front of the taps. He drank Michelob Golden Light and smoked Marlboro reds. Frank the Bartender, still though, could never remember. Frank the Bartender knew the other regulars and their preferences, but when it came to Larry, Frank the Bartender never seemed to remember him from one night to the next. Looking and feeling unremarkable his whole life, Larry was used to this. He took pride in his anonymity.

The Shamrock was a local’s kind of place. Everyone knew each other, even if they didn’t necessarily speak to each other. It was a comfortable domain.

Then one night things changed in a peculiar way. A beautiful man walked through the door to the tune of Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town.” The man had dark, wavy, and slightly greasy, shoulder-length hair and smooth unwrinkled skin. His brilliant green eyes immediately commanded attention. Larry would not normally call a man beautiful, but that is the word that immediately came to the front of his brain. The man was with two squirrelly looking men. They came in, sat in a corner booth and kept to themselves until closing time. They were drinking Guinness and smoking American Spirit cigarettes. All the regulars went about their routine: shooting stick, playing pinball, and pumping quarters into the jukebox for Motorhead, all the while, keeping one suspicious eye on that corner booth.

The next night, all the regulars were there plus the beautiful man and his friends. Then something odd happened: two young, thin, blonde girls opened the front door. They apprehensively scanned all the bodies in the building until their search found its aim. Once their eyes locked on to the beautiful man’s they strolled in as casually as two giddy blondes could. They sat at the booth adjacent to the beautiful man and his squirrelly entourage and ordered a couple shots of courage.

Subsequent nights followed the same pattern. Within a week, the place was packed nightly with young women trying their luck at wooing the beautiful man. Larry sat at his barstool of choice, with his back to the front door, trying to glean insight from the bar chatter. Apparently, the beautiful man was a film actor. Larry heard the man’s name was Colin Farrell. Larry had never heard of him.

After a month, The Shamrock had turned into an MTV-spring break-girls gone wild kind of place — tanned young ladies baring their boobs in tabletop dances; Frank the Bartender furiously scanning his bartenders guide to find recipes for exotic mixed drinks; Colin sitting quietly in the corner; unfazed.

It was on one of these awkward nights that Helena stepped into The Shamrock to the tune of Motley Crue’s “Girls, Girls, Girls.” She, not unlike all the girls who walked into the bar, looked nervously around with her eyes darting from jean jacket to table-dance to jean jacket trying to find the reason she came in. Helena was wearing a plunging, black V-neck shirt with slight lace around the fringes, tight white jeans, and black sandals. Her straight blond hair shone through the smoke and darkness of the bar.

Helena found the empty barstool to the right of Larry and sat slowly and carefully. She looked at Larry and then dug a picture out of her pocket and studied the young man in the picture and then Larry and then the picture. She did this dance until she was sure.

Helena crossed her legs and pointed them at Larry. She stared into the side of his stubbled face trying to will his attention. After several minutes of failing to capture his eyes, she coughed slightly and cleared her throat; Larry still did not turn towards her. Helena uncrossed her legs, took a deep breath, then spoke nervously, but clearly, “You look just like your brother.” Larry’s heart leapt into his throat and his palms began to sweat. He wished, oh God he wished, that he were anywhere but right here at this exact moment. He started to turn towards Helena, but caught himself and instead focused on a spot just below the Miller High Life tap in front of him.

“I wasn’t sure how… I mean… I knew it was you… right when I saw you.” Helena’s voice cracked, but she was losing her inhibition. She was gaining confidence. “I knew it was you.”

It had been three years since Larry had seen his brother Thomas. It had been three years since anybody had seen Thomas. It was right after Larry had run away from home for what would be the last time. Thomas had borrowed his new girlfriend Helena’s car and drove around trying to find Larry. It was raining and the interstate was a slip-n-slide. From what Larry imagined it was broken glass and bent metal and the jaws-of-life and the helicopter flying Thomas quickly to the doctors that would tell Larry’s mother the news. Larry was not allowed to go to Thomas’s funeral. Larry has not spoken to his mother for three years. He has not spoken of Thomas for just as long.

“I knew I would find you someday,” Helena said. “Because Tommy never did, but also, I wanted to see Tommy in you. I miss him. I can see him right here, in you.”

Larry drank his Michelob in big gulps and then inhaled slowly, but deeply from the Marlboro attached to his lips. He looked at Helena with fright and anger and with red in his eyes. He looked at her as if she was a ghost. He saw Thomas in her as well. He couldn’t think of anything to say, he just had swirling thoughts in his head; they were colliding and destroying each other before any thought could be finished.

“I took this picture the morning Tommy died. This is him: forever seventeen.” Helena said, a little less assured now. She had dreamed of finding Larry, but now that she had him, she was unsure of what she needed from him. She felt sick and the noxious smoke and the boozy body-odor of the packed bar traveled through her nose and down her throat stirring up her stomach acid. “Can I see the picture?” Larry asked quietly.

“I have never seen this picture before, it’s weird, ya know?” Larry’s eyebrows dipped down towards his nose causing his eyes to squint slightly, his lips got tight as if trying to hold his tongue and his teeth in place. “It’s funny to see a picture of him I haven’t seen before. It’s like another second of his life I get to share. It’s like he lived a second longer.” Larry tried to find the right words to make sense to Helena, and to make sense to himself. Larry looked back down at the picture and ran his fingers through his unwashed hair. Larry opened his relaxed his jaw and parted his lips to speak, but Helena, now green with nausea said frantically, “I’ve got to go Larry, maybe I’ll see you again.” She put the picture back in her pocket, stumbled quickly out the door, and vomited on the street in the space between the curb and the wheel of a Ford F-150 pickup truck.

Just then, and just as Billy Joel’s ”Piano Man” ended, a bright light appeared, shining through the shaded windows up front. It was yellow like the sun parked on the street outside. Without exception, every head in The Shamrock turned towards the entrance in anticipation. The chatter silenced; the jukebox was stuck in the space between songs; the cue balls were waiting to be struck; the pinballs were waiting to be launched into orbit. The light could have held the bar hostage forever, but instead, faded, and just as mysteriously, the cacophony of the barroom restarted.

It was a couple days before Larry made it back to The Shamrock. He had spent those days in his dark apartment lying in bed listening to the classic rock station and writing letters to his dead brother. They all began with, “I am sorry….” Larry walked in to the silent smattering of locals, the actor stopped showing up and the young firm princesses stopped showing up as well. It was back to just the regulars and the place seemed barren. Larry walked, with his head down, to his barstool of choice and pulled the stool to his right close by. He motioned to Frank the Bartender and ordered a Guinness and a pack of American Spirit cigarettes.

Fading Out

The light above you is flickering fluorescent rhythms on your head

The doctor’s gray hair and deep, wrinkled eyes give you a feeling

Of hope and trust. He pulls out diagrams of your anatomy and points

To the parts that are living death,

The parts they will pry from your collapsing chest.

The doctor can tell you what it takes to live,

But his somber stare

Falls to the floor when you ask,

“What is it like to die?”

I was in the car when you called and

I told you what they ripped from me

I tried to make it easy. I said the fight is not all in your fists

It is in your will and your soul and your guts

I told you to wake up each day with faith and to be

The person you and I always wished you’d be

I said, “Try it. Nothing will take away your courage; your mind;

Your you.”

I said all that in the spaces between silences and sobs. It is not

In our nature to cry, especially not to each other.

I said all that while in a daze.

I thought later, that what I meant to say was, “It’s like a swarm of a million

Black bees, aiming their death upon the body; your city.”

Then later after they took your lung, and shortly before God

Reclaimed your body; There was the last call.

I was in a dusty, downtown apartment and you were prone

In that hospital bed they moved into the house a half a country away.

And you spoke through oxygen tubes with what was left of your mind.

You were fading out over the telephone. You

Managed to breathe softly to me, “Son.

You were wrong. There is nothing Cancer Can’t take From you.”

Time to Spare

All the smokers are packed behind the glass of the only smoker-friendly restaurant in St. Louis’ Lambert airport. There is a cloud that hovers in the entranceway. I am in a well-lit, non-smoking bar across the concourse. I am sitting on my barstool with by carry-on bag at my feet staring into a giant mug of beer. I am the single patron seated in the middle of a long row of well-used barstools. If I look straight ahead, there is a mirror behind the hanging glasses and the waiting bottles. If I look straight ahead, I can see the stubble on my face, and red in my eyes, and cloud that must be hanging above me. If I look straight ahead I can see a picture of him, but I look down.

I wait for a flight I would rather not take.

On the other side of that flight there is family and tears and a funeral. There is a casket in some dark back room of a funeral home with a body that used to be a man that is my father.

For now, I run my fingers along the base of the beer mug. The water condensation from the cold beer is making a mess of the napkin underneath the mug. I make a wet ball from the napkin and roll it towards the back of the bar where it stops just short of the edge and quivers and stops. I study the moisture on my fingers. I rub my right thumb and right index finger together to create friction and I hear a faint squeaking sound.

I think of a Sunday afternoon two weeks ago when I dialed his number for last time. I didn’t really know what to say to make him feel better. I think he knew it was the last time to say something special, but his condition would not allow him to make much sense at all.

The bartender lures me out of my own head and back to the present when he asks if I need another beer. I say, “Definitely.” A luxurious cacophony swirls around me: kids screaming, workers laughing, couples fighting, and couples reconciling. There is a basketball game on the TV above the bar. There is a smell of beer and bad airport food. “Why are airport bars so bright?” I wonder to myself. At that moment, the lights dim slightly and a neon Bacardi sign casts an orange glow across my face. I scoot my barstool closer so my chest presses against the bar. The clock on my cellphone says I have thirty-five minutes to go.

The bartender is a wrinkled man with gray thinning hair. With a slow gait, he approaches with another beverage for me. I dig in my pocket for a wadded collection of ones and fives. I give him cash, he gives me beer, and we make our exchange silently. He knocks twice on the bar to signal his thanks and walks away with the same slow amble.

I think of flying in low over the water with the lights of Norfolk shining in my eyes. I imagine the silent drive that will follow and walking into a house haunted by the echoes of his voice still reverberating, his hands still hovering there.

I am joined at my left by an older woman with a bad blonde wig, shiny leather skin, and aqua-blue eye shadow that looks like it was applied with a roller. She smells of gingerbread cookies and whiskey. She orders a double Jack Daniels on the rocks. She catches me sizing her up and says, “I can’t fly without a little drink. I’ll be a nervous wreck once I get up in the air.” When it arrives, she puts it to her glittered lips and snaps her head back violently, dumping the contents down her waiting throat. In awe, I turn my attention towards my beer and sip quickly.

David Day article

I struggled with writing this article. I didn't know if I wanted to tackle a personal and sensitive issue such as this, but then I realized that nobody reads this paper anyway. I am glad I decided to write it.

Will you still love me when I'm 64?

Time to wake up and take my pills. This one for the heart, this one for my head, this one for my eyes, this one for my leg. I peek outside and the snow is coming down hard. I am thankful I no longer have to commute in this mess every morning. I have a different routine now that I have retired. My wife is heading out to have brunch with her ladies. I turn on the television to check the score of the Wolves game from the previous night. ESPN 37 usually has the baseball news in the morning and ESPN 58 has basketball highlights. I don’t know what we did before there were 6000 channels to choose from.

I set my creaking bones on my faded lazy boy and enjoy the morning alone. The snow lets up around noon so I head to the garage to retrieve the snowblower. Most people have automated snow removers they can turn on at the flip of a switch and it cleans their driveway in five minutes. I, on the other hand, have nothing else to do all day and it gives me something to complain about.

Gone Fishin'

Be back next week...

pimpled and angry

Open letter to that guy and his friends at The Shins show who were standing by me and insisted on screaming their conversations to one another over the music.

Thank you for your company.

I am glad that you are such a big fan of The Shins. How do I know you are such a big fan? Because when you had your back to the stage and were screaming over the music I heard you telling your friends what a big fan you were. That is awesome. I am glad that you can enjoy a great show by a great band with your back turned and without paying any attention to the band whatsoever.

I would also like to thank you for sharing details of your life with me and the other people standing near you while we were trying to watch and listen to The Shins. Here are some things I learned:

1. That girl; the one you flirted with all night. She does not want to have anything to do with you. I gathered she is a friend’s sister or roommate or something, she is trying to be nice, but she really wants to tell you to fuck off.

2. That story you told about how you were upstairs looking for your friend Thompson and you walked up to someone that looked like Thompson from behind and you were screaming, “Thompson, Thompson!,” but the person you were yelling at just stood there oblivious. That was a great story. By the fifth time you screamed that story to your friends I became convinced that the person you were screaming at upstairs really was Thompson and he just didn’t want to talk to you. I can’t blame him. If it was me, as soon as I heard your voice screaming my name I would have run away into the crowd and prayed that you didn’t follow me.

3. You are not who you think you are. People are laughing at you, not with you. I am sorry you had to hear this from me. I hope it doesn’t affect our relationship.

So, in closing I would like to thank you for stoking my anger once again. I hope the next time we go to the same show you have laryngitis and a broken hip.

Love,

Me

A Metro Article

Here is an article that appears in the April issue of The Metropolitan.

Wedding Bells

I know nothing about weddings except that when I go to them I usually get drunk and make and idiot of myself out on the dance floor. I never put much thought into the planning of an event as important as a wedding. Even while I was buying a ring, I never thought about things like caterers and reception sites and flowers. This was a major oversight on my part. There are things I never knew existed like people whose entire job is planning weddings. I never knew that if you plan on getting married you need to book a place to do it well in advance. I thought it was like making a dinner reservation, that you just called a golf course or a hotel and said, “Yeah, I’ve got 150 people coming in two weeks so you might need to push some tables together or something.”

It doesn’t work that way.

Dreams

Larry always dreams of black helicopters and explosions and death. His first apartment had railroad tracks in the front yard. Twice a day, three in the morning and three in the afternoon, a locomotive sped by. At first Larry would wake up in fright every time the train went by, later he dreamt straight through. It was here that the nightmares began.

As Larry watched from blocks away, a construction crane dropped a pallet of explosives on the roof of a high-rise apartment building. Larry sweats and pants and wonders why he is the only one that is panicked. People keep walking their dogs, riding their bikes, or moving to the beat of their headphones. A second explosion destroys the neighboring high-rise, still no one notices.

Black helicopters survey the scene circling the destruction like a swarm of flies. Suddenly there is silence the helicopters turn towards Larry just as a third explosion occurs beyond Larry’s view, behind the first two explosions. Finally, there is chaos. Priests dressed in robes of white are running with their crucifixes clutched in their fists. They are running from the explosion towards Larry. There is one priest emerging from the smoke and then Larry notices two, then Larry sees twenty or thirty of these cross-wielding padres running fervently in his direction. He notices the dark around their eyes, deep creviced wrinkles and frothy mouths.

Larry wakes subtly. He is used to the weirdness and destruction. He just stares at the ceiling and tries to think of nothing at all.

The Telephone is not Your Friend

The first ring.

I pretend like I don’t hear the phone. “It must be in the cube next to me.”

The second ring.

I look at the small round red light blinking on my phone. My palms are starting to sweat. I look at the clock on my PC and wonder if I can just say it is too close to quitting time to answer the damn phone. I look casually over my left shoulder to see if my boss is there watching me. I stare at the blinking red light again.

The third ring.

Shit. Shit. Shit. It is probably some stupid user. “Why don’t you just reboot? you stupid ass?” I wrap my fingers around the hand piece of the phone, but I do not remove it from the cradle. I can fell my armpits sweating into my sweater. Shit. Shit. Shit.

The fourth ring.

“What is going on here? Why can’t I just pick up the phone?”

The red light is still blinking. The plastic of the hand piece is wet with hand sweat. I can smell my deodorant.

The red light stops blinking and is now unlit. There is no fifth ring. I look around to see if anybody sees me. I hold my breath and listen if anybody is talking about me. I try to make myself invisible. I feel cool as the air conditioning vent above blows dry the nervous sweat my pale skin is covered with.

I stare at the phone looking at the light that lives next to the word PHML. I am waiting to see if it lights up or if I truly avoided something. If I am lucky, the stupid user called someone else.

The light next to PHML illuminates. I decide that I do not notice it and go back to surfing the internet.

Finally, a Radio Station Worth Listening to?

Here is an article I wrote a few weeks ago about the new radio station in town. The CP article today motivated me to post. It is weird how much press this MPR-backed station is receiving. I think the backlash is beginning...

Music radio is a good idea, in theory. A person sits in front of a microphone and a CD player playing DJ for a party. Shelves of music surround the DJ. The DJ plays what the audience wants to hear. That is the way it is supposed to be. At some indefinable point in the last fifty years, the concept has shifted from a personal relationship between a listener and a station to a concept of listeners as customers and radio stations as giant profit-driven companies. Somehow, this presentation of artists and their art turned into marketing plans and sales figures and people in suits buying each other expensive dinners. I can not remember exactly when I lost faith in radio, but I can remember when I was saved.

As “The Current” staked their claim in the radio landscape they gave local hip-hop duo Atmosphere the opportunity to plant the flag in the ground. “I wanted to write a song about my hometown”, were the first words sung on the air. These lyrics begin the song “Shh”, which is an anthem about the joys of living in Minneapolis and the Midwest.

The first day in the life of “The Current” filled the airwaves with the kind of eclectic music play list that would have had the president of Clear Channel clutching his heart through his chest. They played local music old and new such as The Replacements and The Owls. They played legends like Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, Robert Johnson, and Al Green. They, of course, played new below the radar bands like Death Cab for Cutie, The Arcade Fire, and Marah.

“The Current”, 89.3, is a radio station that realizes that people over the age of twenty-five still care about music. They realize that just because their listeners have kids and day jobs does not mean they do not still feel passionate about new music.

There is a rich history of music in Minnesota. The big swing bands would come through in the thirties. Rock and roll was revered in the fifties and sixties. There have been many regional and national music legends in Minnesota. From Prince to Atmosphere, from The Replacements to Happy Apple, a diverse and talented musical legacy exists.

Unfortunately, for most artists there has been no place to be heard on Twin Cities radio for the last ten years. There use to be a fostering radio relationship with artists as far back as KDWB in the fifties to REV in the early nineties. Corporations have “killed the radio star.”

“The Current” is an interesting concept: the station is part of an ever-growing Minnesota Public Radio family. MPR is hardly an independent entity. They are, in every sense of the word, a corporate entity. When the new MPR-backed popular music station was announced, it had many people scratching their heads wondering what it would be. On one hand, there was the idea that a public radio station would have a better understanding of what the Twin Cities public lacks in a radio station. On the other hand, MPR being a sprawling corporation, there was a definite chance of this being another in a long line of mediocre corporate radio stations.

In the weeks leading up to the launch, there was a blog started by the 89.3 staff that worked as a communication tool between the clamoring public and the sculptors of the new format. Hope was given via the blog. The blog’s readers were informed of the new DJs and staff being hired and were given the chance to suggest what kind of music they wanted to hear.

The on-air talent that was being assembled was impressive. Thorn Skroch and Mary Lucia, both REV veterans, are respected music aficionados in the Twin Cities. Mark Wheat helped form Radio K, the University of Minnesota’s student radio station, into one of the most respected college stations in the country and is also a highly respected club DJ.

So far “The Current” has been living up to the promises and expectations. The few days following the launch the streets were buzzing with excitement. The local hipsters in blogs, bars, and record stores were all uncharacteristically optimistic. An inevitable backlash will occur just because that is the way the backbiting and gossipy music scene works. Let’s just hope that The Current can fight through that by staying true to its eclectic vision.

The Metropolitan

An article I wrote appears in this months Metropolitan.

More boring by the day, but they pay me...

I work in corporate America.

Corporate America is soulless and depraved.

Does that make me soulless and depraved?

The company I work for has been around for almost seventy years, but has grown wildly in the last twenty. The practices of my company are in direct conflict with many of my personal beliefs. This is not a diverse company. All of the many vice-presidents are middle-aged white men. If you walk the halls of the sprawling suburban corporate campus, you will see an alarming lack of minority employees.

If there is a successful locally run small business in any town in America that does what my company does, that mom-n-pop business will be targeted. We will saturate the town with salespeople and try to steal their customers with prices lower than the local business can afford. If this is not successful in putting that company out of business, we then offer the owner of that small business a large sum of money and a director’s job with the company. We then absorb that locally owned company in to the giant corporate behemoth that is my company. Of course, those low prices do not stick around and that saturation of salespeople does not last.

Therefore, the people of that town are stuck with one company to fill their needs.

Us.

Listen to music

Juan Appagado

Bubba Loo Hugby

We're gonna need golf shoes...

“Don’t take any guff off those swine.”

I was shocked to hear the news this morning about Hunter S. Thompson. He took his own life this past weekend. When thinking about the life he has lived it makes most people’s lives look like they were lived as puritanical shut-ins. I think it is amazing that he lived this long. There is no way he could die from natural causes. He was obviously super-human, impervious to the wounds that wear down normal people. He grew stronger. The only way he could die is by doing it himself. Can you imagine Dr. Gonzo in a nursing home?

I wonder what the legacy will be: great American writer or great American lunatic. He invented a style of writing, gonzo journalism. He told the truth through the filtered lens of his whirring and ebullient mind. His mind wired unlike any other, spinning backwards and curling upwards; turning inside out and spitting up brilliantly mad prose.

His insanity was not an act. He knew he wasn’t like you. He kept to himself, for your safety. Fear and loathing at the gates of hell.

In the morning

Larry drove towards downtown on Lyndale Avenue. His head was pounding and all the thoughts within that head were fuzzy. As he drove slowly and cautiously, the façade of the CC Club shone in the corner of his eye.

Larry decided it made more sense to go there now than go home, sleep on the couch, and suffer the demons of hangover. It was 9:41am according to the digital display on the car radio.

The CC did not open until 10:00am.

He found a parking spot on a street behind the bar. As he parallel parked, he may or may not have passed out momentarily. He stumbled out of the car, stepped in a puddle of melted snow, and broke through a thin pudding skin of ice on the top.

The cold morning air attacked his nostrils and mouth and suddenly Larry did not feel stable. He tried to run behind an abandoned building, but he could not make it. He stood knee deep in the front yard of a run down duplex. His hands were on his knees as a steady stream of vomit and mucus exited his facial orifices. The hot vomit melted the snow and formed a perfect spray pattern. It also turned the blinding blue-white snow to a putrid shade of yellow-green-brown filth. Larry had not remembered the last time he ate, but apparently, corn was involved.

He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his flannel and walked around the corner and up the block to the door of the CC Club, which had just been unlocked.

Valet is Contagious

Valet don’t get anywhere in a hurry. They don’t scream for you to follow them. They don’t boast of the greatness they are achieving before they have achieved it. No. Instead, they come to you casually, they get you to buy them a drink and then say, “Hey. Did you hear about Johnny Ace?”

The bed of music where these stories lie is the kind of perfect pop that reminds you of other local bands like The Hang Ups or a less bombastic Olympic Hopefuls. When the band drops out and singer Robin Kyle and his guitar backpedal from a former lover you realize that sprinkled on top of those sugar melodies are a dirty, nuanced, and dark lyrical world.

The dive bars are where the characters in Valet’s world live. They are picking up pieces of their lives, their relationships, and their memories of the night before. While not a concept album there is this theme running throughout. That is the idea that we are all searching for an answer for what to do next. We do this by drowning our sorrows at Stand Up Franks. Or by driving out of town while Dylan is cranked. Or by trying to sew the last remaining threads of a relationship back together.

This is not unfamiliar territory for a rock band. There are as many songs about girls, booze, driving, and death as there are bands to sing them. Robin Kyle, however, doesn’t play the victim in these vignettes. He just paints the picture and lets you judge and that is why the songs work upon repeated listening.

This is the band’s second full-length record and it arrived with much buzz. What is unusual about that is that Valet are collectively recluse. They rarely play shows, so in turn they rarely promote themselves. That is why it is astounding that this CDs release was accompanied by mainstream press coverage and a packed Turf Club show. I think it very surprising in this decade that music can sell itself just by being great music. It gives hope to the cynical, withered music lover’s soul.

The answers

1. I thought it was green.

2. Oh, that naked santa.

3. 33 1/3

4. The green hillside of an irish town on a crisp autumn morning.

5. boobies.

Lonely on the floor

I tried to feel your eyes upon me from the stage, but the noise and the lights got in the way. I saw you across the room after the show, but you were talking to him and my head was still spinning down. All the hand shakers were telling me how great I was. I thought I didn’t need you anymore.

Our eyes met as I carried my guitar out the door. I tried to shout and scream with my eyes, but I know they only looked drunk, tired, and blue.

I’ll be drinking and driving all night long. If anyone needs my I’ll be stranded on the side of the road.

Before Lemmy

Larry spent his high school years living in a trailer with his Mother Irene and his little brother Thomas. This wasn’t a fancy trailer like you see in movies. This was an aluminum box designed to be on wheels but was now supported by concrete blocks and timber. They lived “off the grid” and pretty much off the face of the earth.

This aluminum box sat in what Larry supposed was an abandoned farmer’s field. There was a dirt road a quarter of a mile outside the front door of the trailer. There was an ever-growing pile of trash a half mile outside the back door. They cooked their food over the same kerosene heaters that they used for heat. There was convenience store a mile down that dirt road that had an active water spigot behind the building. Irene, Larry, and Thomas would lug jugs and bottles down to the store to fill them up for water with which they would bathe, drink, and cook.

Irene worked at the Burger King in town once. That was the only job Larry remembers her having during his high school years. She, of course had an affair with the manager and when the manager was through having fun with her, well, Irene was collecting unemployment again.

Larry tried to keep up with the kids in his class. No one knew where he lived or how he lived. He would steal nice clothes, but from the wrong stores. He would always be on the tail end of fashion. He would steal a polo shirt and bugle boys from the Kmart and show up Monday morning to see the kids wearing tie-dye and acid wash. He would steal acid wash jeans and an OP sweatshirt and the kids would be wearing flannel and converse.

Larry barely graduated and not long after he met a girl while jockeying the register at a Pizza Hut. After a month of dating, the girl really wanted to see where Larry lived. Embarrassed while she drove the three miles that he walked everyday between town and the aluminum box, he kept his head down and looked away the entire three-minute ride.

There was a look of fright in the girls eyes and Larry would have seen it if he could bring himself to look at her. Irene was at the door smoking a Marlboro and wearing a housecoat. The girl let out a barely audible gasp. Then she was struck by a trembling, unwashed, ashamed, open fist.

The girl cried and ran to the car and drove wildly home.

Irene cried for herself and for her son. She walked over, with a closed fist struck, and drew blood from Larry’s nose. Then she just stared with shame and fright.

Larry cried and did not wipe the blood from his nose. He looked up at the gray dusk sky and then slowly walked in the opposite direction of town.

A Useful Phrase

Here it is:

"You dirty sonuvabitch."

enjoy.

James Brown, Introduction, Part one

James Brown is a chocolate easter bunny. His whole life is dedicated to making kids happy on Easter Sunday Morning. He lives in a forest. A forest of licorice and gum drops and edible ferns. His best friends are a trio of triplets named the licorice whips. Leon, Karl, and Sylvester Whip. They are of the gum-drop forest Whips; an esteemed family of candy kingdom royalty.